Collaboration Lego Style

Creating a shared vision, talking through it until it becomes a plan they both understand, then dividing up work between them, troubleshooting together and adjusting the plan, until it's done. Collaboration builds relationships, not just houses.

tags: lego, collaboration, family, commercial, house

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

In-Skype advertising

A few more ads for the English language North American market within the Skype for Windows 4 client. Some are tips, like this new one for The Phone Booth Experiment.

 

Turn on Skype-provided tips, help messages, promotions and public service announcements through the "Alerts & messages" controls under the Tools > Options menu command. Or turn them off.

Use the #inskypeads tag for alerts you see inside Skype. You can always tweet them to @skypejournal email them to tips@skypejournal.com and we'll share them. Thanks!

tags: skype, advertising, design, ue, ui, ux, inskypeads

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

How will Skype target internal ads?

Skype's been showing ads inside Skype 4.x.

The orange backgrounds are commercial. They show promotional offers ("get 15% off") and explain value propositions ("Save money on..."). 

Some ads show tips and tricks to get more from your Skype experience or avoid problems.

Now we're seeing the first public service announcements. "Peace One Day: What will you do to make peace on 21st September? Visit www.peaceday.org." Instead of Skype art it features the Peace One Day logo.

UPDATE: You can control whether you see these messages at all. Skype menu, Tools > Options > Notifications > Alerts & Messages. 

Peace One Day is a third-party message. It's served in English so Skype's ad server apparently filters or ads are served in all Skype languages, the flavor selected by each user's language preference. What else can Skype use to target ad placement? They can serve locality (profile, IP address, mobile GPS). They can mine your shallow Skype profile for gender (women often omit this or lie) or keywords.

Would it bother you if Skype mined your chat text to automatically place commercial ads? Google does this. Is the Skype experience different than webmail?

How would you feel if Skype analyzed your buddy list and contact history? "Five of your friends dialed this ad." Relevance in advertising is good for users, right?

Perhaps there's a future in shared ads, ads seen by all the parties in a chat at the same time. "Manchester United is playing a friendly next week. Tune in." Fodder for conversation. Trigger a shared conference call to a service: talk amongst yourselves while listening to a tune or an interview with a celebrity.

Skype's been careful in their in-client advertising. They don't want to harm user experience or the Skype brand.

Email screenshots of your in-Skype ads to tips@skypejournal.com.

tags: skype, ad, ads, advertising, psa, promotion, adserver, advert, banner

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Codec Wars: Yahoo! Messenger 10 + GIPS Video

Yahoo! Messenger 10 beta came out last week, switching to the Global IP Solutions’ VideoEngine for 1-to-1 voice calls.

Y!M video calling is not backward compatible; all users must be on Y!M 10. Interop with MSN doesn't extend to video calls, so friendship across networks is still limited to commodity text IM.

Yahoo! recommends at least 300 Kbps download and 128 Kbps upload, video cards with 96 MB memory, and Microsoft DirectX. This compute burden comes from the audio and video codecs.

Yahoo! adopting GIPS's video plumbing is a coupe for GIPS. Yahoo!'s choices influence other software companies; GIPS just became a safer choice for video. Despite Yahoo! only using the GIPS VideoEngine for limited 1-to-1 video chats, this opens up room for Yahoo! to expand to video conferencing and game-related video applications.

So far this year Skype published its home-grown SILK wideband audio codec, Google bought On2 for its video codecs, the telecom industry held its first conferences on "HD telephony," Microsoft released a bandwidth-consuming HD webcam, and Yahoo! boosted the quality of its video codecs. Moore's Law and mobile broadband seem to be pulling industry to higher fidelity.

Screenshots and comments:

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Step 1 of 4 – Welcome to Yahoo! Messenger – Typical Install

"Typical Install" includes everything: two browser add-ins, setting Yahoo.com to your home page, and making Yahoo! your default search engine.

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Step 1 of 4 – Welcome to Yahoo! Messenger – Custom Install

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Step 2 of 4 – License Agreement and Terms

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Step 3 of 4 – Ready? Set. Install!

The payload is about 16 MB without toolbars. Skype comes in around 20.

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Progress Message - "More friends = more fun"

Progress messages set expectations and guide users to features they may not discover on their own.

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Progress Message - "Keep Friends at your Fingertips"

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Progress Message - "A better video and voice experience"

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Progress Message - "Continue the conversation on your phone"

Installing Yahoo! Messenger – Step 4 of 4 – Installation is complete!

Yahoo! Messenger 10 - Login panel

It's a loooong panel.

Import Contacts

The import contacts wizard suffers from the Password Antipattern, asking you to trust Yahoo! with your logins to other services. Most of the sites Yahoo! imports contacts from support OAuth.

Still no contact import from other Yahoo! properties like Delicious, flickr, and upcoming. Or from Skype.

Yahoo! Messenger Video and Voice Setup - 1 of 3 - Microphone

Yahoo! Messenger Video and Voice Setup - 2 of 3 - Speaker

Yahoo! Messenger Video and Voice Setup - 3 of 3 - Camera

Goofy face not included.

Yahoo! Messenger 10 Home Page

A Messenger "home page" isn't new. This design keeps the distracting advertising apart from news and tools.

The Yahoo! Mail tab again shows messaging media are converging experiences, just as Web Messenger is part of Yahoo! web mail and the Yahoo! home page.

GIPS news release below:

Global IP Solutions Powers The New Yahoo! Messenger Video Calling

New Video Call Feature Available for Everyone on Yahoo! Messenger

San Francisco — August 24, 2009 — Global IP Solutions (Oslo Børs: GIPS) announced today that Yahoo! Messenger, a leader in real-time communications with more than 133 million users worldwide, is using GIPS VideoEngine™ to enable new high-quality video calling with the launch of Yahoo! Messenger 10.

Since early 2006, GIPS has provided the underlying voice technology for Yahoo! Messenger, allowing friends, family and colleagues to communicate. Now with the addition of the video calling feature, everyone on Yahoo! Messenger can enjoy video calls enabled by GIPS VideoEngine for superior sound, picture quality and user experience.

“With the launch of Yahoo! Messenger 10, we’re allowing people to instantly communicate with friends and family around the world through new interactive and social features like video calls,” said Dave Merriwether, senior director of Yahoo! Messenger. “The GIPS VideoEngine enables us to provide the Yahoo! Messenger community with the best video experience possible. Now people can enjoy full-screen, face-to-face chats with friends and family at no cost, in the familiar Yahoo! Messenger environment.”

“Yahoo! Messenger is the leading communication platform that provides people with the greatest choice to stay connected to one another through text IM, PC-based calling, mobile text messaging and now video calling,” said Emerick Woods, GIPS’ Chief Executive Officer. “We’re proud to work with Yahoo! to deliver a truly differentiated high quality video experience for the hundreds of millions of people on Yahoo! Messenger around the world,” added Woods.

To download the latest Yahoo! Messenger 10, visit http://messenger.yahoo.com/winbeta

tags: gips, codecs, yahoo, skype, video, voip, google, on2, videoengine, conference, conferencing, competition

Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

Skype competitors suck. So says recruiting video.

meaningfulwork asks "Has your job expired?" in this video.

This leads to http://MyJobHasExpired.com.

Which leads to http://newjobs.skype.com/

The concept started with Skype alumnus Villu Arak (@villuarak), now CEO of Hill & Knowlton Estonia who brought the idea to Skype. The collaboration started then. Villu said "all actors, except for the evil dandruff-skiing boss, are Skype employees who volunteered to participate. The director is Andres Maimik, a young Estonian filmmaker who also does commercial work through the Kuukulgur production company."

I used to work in the staffing industry and it loves industrial metrics like time-to-fill-an-opening and average-cost-to-advertise-a-job.

This campaign seems focused on attracting people with Skype's personality traits. Quirky humor, curiosity, ambition, sense of self worth, a desire to have your work matter. Not to mention you're a YouTube user, you're socially active online, you're a knowledge worker. And maybe you're ready to be appreciated, to make a difference, to do something new and challenging. To be with people like you.

In other words, instead of driving traffic to the job site by keywords from skills ("Cocoa developer wanted"), Skype's recruiting from a smaller pool of people who might actually fit Skype's playful, rebellious culture. (Among other things, a culture where sharing videos is an easy, common social gesture.) This should be a much better return on everyone's time.

tags: skype, hr, staffing, humor, recruiting, advertising, branding, brand, hillandknowlton, ee, estonia, myjobhasexpired, newjobs.skype.com

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

2009 Q1 Google Earnings Slides

2009 Q1 Google Earnings Slides

View more presentations from evanwolf.

The face of the Great Recession. From Google's quarterly conference call. 

A maturing market? Or a contracting market?

Weakening seems to be all US for now.

The good news is that as the economy tanked, and per-unit ad values fell, Google spent less on advertising to bring in traffic.  

A few shots from the Skype party at CTIA Mobile 2009

Company parties at tradeshows have messages. Skype's Wednesday night party at last week's CTIA Mobile 2009 event had a few.

• Fruit: Celebrating the launch of Skype for the Apple iPhone and announcement of Skype Lite for the Blackberry. Without permission to use the logos, Skype had the two fruit (apples, blackberries) on murals, in staff wigs, inside furniture, in cocktails, in ice sculptures, and in deserts.
• Circus: Performers from Cirque du Soleil (or something similar) performed throughout the evening, on stage and intimately. Jugglers, strong men, gymnasts, acrobats, mimes. Buxom hostesses in dramatic wardrobe spent an hour learning how to demo Skype for iPhone and four hours in makeup. Message: excitement.
• Ice: Skype ice sculptures decorated a Bellagio ballroom. An ice tower at the entrance, an ice pool table (along with pool cues and billiard balls) on the terrace, and a large monument in a lounge area. Message: we're showing our money.

Everyone there had a great time. Good food, smart people, pleasant music quiet enough that you could talk them, warm weather, and elbow room amid garishly over the top decoration and eye candy.

This was the first year Skype showed up in force at CTIA Mobile. The party was spoils of Skype's war as the company moves into mobile telecom in a big way, with high margins, high growth, increased share, and sustained profits.

After the circus acts, Scott Durchlag introduced Skype's first television commercial. 

A six foot tall ice tower in the Bellagio hallway.

 

A full size pool table cast in ice. Folks played for hours, even as it melted. The far right pocket was a sure thing as it warmed up first.

This large ice statue overlooking the courtyard was filled little apples, symbolic of the iPhone.

After the party, the ice crew dismantled the Skype sculptures.

Heavy, massive ice blocks.

Skype carted off in pieces.

I asked several CTIA Mobile alumni if the event was overkill. They all said it was a shout out to the mobile carriers that Skype was here in a big way and here to stay.

My take: Old school B2B industry marketing. Just one deal with any of dozen heavyweights there will pay for Skype's party, press conference, Showstoppers press event, and sponsorship of the VIP Lounge at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

tags: skype, party, ctia09, ctia, citamobile09, bellagio, lasvegas, vegas, marketing, promotion, april, blackberry, apple, circus, iphone, tv, commercial, advertising, ice, fruit

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.

TV commercial from Skype

 

sfx:

soft sound of fast typing on a computer keyboard

text:

Sarah had a baby girl at 6:30am

sfx:

Skype water drop, into music

father's voice over animation:

She's beautiful, so beautiful. We're calling her Laura. We think she looks like a Laura. She already has a full head of hair.

animation fades to father's face, pulling back revealing father, Sarah and Laura are on a wide-screen video call being watched by grandparents

father

and she's got my eyes. luckily for her, everything else is pure Sarah.

announcer:

With free Skype-to-Skype video calls, you can be right there with them, wherever they are.

fade to slide:

Skype logo + "Free at Skype.com"

The ad reinforces existing brand elements: sounds of people using the product, the transition from IM to voice to video, family connections, and life events. Oh, and clouds.

We won't know for a while where or how much air time Skype is buying. English accents suggest this ad is targeted to the UK.

One thing: the Skype video used by the family has a 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, not available with today's consumer webcams. Is that a buried product announcement or a vision of the future?

Hat tips to Dan Furrier and Kara Swisher.

tags: skype, ad, ads, advert, advertising, tv, television, video, marketing, promotion

Call me at +1-510-455-4384, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.